Les Diaboliques (, lit. transl. The Diabolical Ones or Diabolical Women, released as Diabolique in the United States and variously translated as The Devils or The Fiends) is a 1955 French noir psychological thriller film co-written and directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and starring Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, Paul Meurisse, and Charles Vanel. The story blends elements of psychological thriller, crime drama and psychological horror, with the plot focusing on a woman and her husband's mistress who conspire to murder the man. It is based on the 1952 novel Celle qui n'était plus ( The One Who Was No More) by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.

Clouzot, after finishing The Wages of Fear (1953), optioned the screenplay rights to the novel, preventing Alfred Hitchcock from making the film. The film helped inspire Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). Robert Bloch, the author of the novel Psycho, stated in an interview that his all-time favorite horror film was Les Diaboliques.

Released in France in January 1955, Les Diaboliques was the seventh highest-grossing film of the year, with a total of 3,674,380 admissions. It received largely favorable reviews from French critics, and won two Louis Delluc Prizes (for Best Film and Best Performance by Signoret). While reception in the United Kingdom was mixed, the film was favorably received by critics in the United States, where it won the title of Best Foreign Film of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review. By late 1956, it had become the highest-grossing French film released in the United States at that time.

  • Madeleine Suffel as the degreaser (uncredited)

Themes

Film historian Susan Hayward regards Les Diaboliques as "something of an unsettled text" which crosses genres, combining elements of psychological thrillers and film noir, ultimately classifying it as "a transgressive and transcendent film noir. There is fragmentation and excess, both of which are played out through the narrative and the body, and both of which function to challenge the constructed order of things, social restrictions, established laws and hierarchies as they relate to notions of censorship and sexuality."

While the film's source novel explicitly reveals a lesbian relationship between Mireille and Lucienne, the equivalents of Christina and Nicole, the film eliminates this element; however, Hayward suggests that this implication is still present, though allowing other interpretations: "It can equally be seen for what it is (albeit the filmic text tries to hide it away), namely a lesbian relationship. It can also be seen as a mother-daughter relationship. Nicole takes care of Christina; she speaks to her at times as a mother would to a daughter. Patiently and meticulously she explains why the murder must be carried out and why it must be carried out in a particular way. She is protective of her sexual immaturity. She soothes her when Michel is cruel to her (and so on). Already, we are looking at three types of ambiguity here, unfixing the social order of things. Nothing remains in place."

Academic Daniel Tilsley interprets Les Diaboliques as a film whose horror emerges "because of the perceptual dissonance between the subjective and the objective world, with the psychologically tormented protagonist Christina unable to accurately make sense of the world around her...  [the film] focuses on the gradual distortion of Christina's perception of the world around her as she is plunged deeper and deeper into fear." He and his brother Jean (who took the pseudonym Jérôme Géronimi) The building and its surroundings matched the director's vision perfectly since they projected the desired mood of decay and neglect, featuring an adjacent swimming pool that was dirty and full of slime. Clouzot spent five weeks shooting at this location.

The screenplay placed Nicole's apartment in Niort, but the actual house used for filming was in Montfort-l'Amaury, just opposite the building that previously appeared in Clouzot's Le Corbeau. The morgue scenes were shot inside an actual mortuary at the Institut Médico-légal in Paris. The rest was filmed at Saint-Maurice Studios southeast of Paris, which took an additional nine weeks. The interior sets were designed by Léon Barsacq. Cinematographer Armand Thirard used two camera crews to speed up the shooting that was falling behind schedule. Despite his efforts, the filming took twice longer than the projected 48 days. Thirard shot the majority of the film using predominately medium shots and close-ups to accentuate a sense of anxiety and claustrophobia.

The film's central murder sequence in which Meurisse's character is drowned in the bathtub was shot over a period of two days. To prevent the actor from becoming ill, the crew filled the bathtub with hot water for each take, and in between shots, Meurisse was redressed in dry clothes and given whisky toddies.

Originally the film was to be called Les Veuves (The Widows) but this was deemed unmarketable. Eleven weeks into filming it was changed to Les Démoniaques. Eventually it was renamed Les Diaboliques but this title was already used for a collection of short stories by the 19th-century writer Barbey d'Aurevilly. Clouzot was permitted to use this title but only on the condition that he give the author a proper mention. He did it by opening the film with a quote from the preface to d'Aurevilly's work: "A portrait is always moral when it is tragic and shows the horror of the things it represents."

Release

Les Diaboliques premiered on 29 January 1955 at the Gaumont-Palace Berlitz, where it had an exclusive theatrical run for seventeen weeks. In the United States, a press review screening was held at New York City's Fine Arts Theater on Halloween 1955, followed by an official U.S. premiere there on 21 November 1955. The film's San Francisco release began the following month, on 28 December 1955, where it had a six month-long exhibition at the Larkin Theater.

The Western premiere at the Esquire Theatre in Denver followed in late January 1956. For this engagement, the theater introduced a no-late-seating policy, described by the Rocky Mountain News as "unprecedented": "Because of the unusual nature of this motion picture, the Esquire Theater will not admit any patron after the main feature has begun." The practice predated Alfred Hitchcock's similar no-late-admission policy for Psycho by four years.

In the United Kingdom, the film premiered in London on 1 December 1955, under the title The Fiends.

Warner Bros.-Seven Arts theatrically reissued the film in the United States in the fall of 1966. In 1995, the film was given another theatrical re-release in the United States by Kino International commemorating its fortieth anniversary.

Marketing

Though it was swiftly described by critics as a horror film upon release, Les Diaboliques was marketed as a psychological thriller. Promotional materials for the film in the United States expressly warned audiences not to reveal the film's ending to the public, while British advertising materials indicated that theatre patrons would not be admitted once the film had started.

The film's end credits themselves contain an early example of such an "anti-spoiler" message requesting audience members not to disclose the twist ending: